Bill's Comments

Last year in May or June, Malcolm Pollack posted an item on intentionality. It was his response to issues that had arisen in discussions at Bill Vallicella’s The Maverick Philosopher on the philosophy of mind.

To set the stage for the discussion, here is the essence of Malcolm’s post:

One philosophical view holds that there is simply no way that matter – a rock, a cloud, a chunk of brass – can be, on its own, “about” anything. “Aboutness” is exclusively the hallmark of the “mental”, it is said. Our world is full of meaningful artifacts such as books and maps, but these objects only derive the intentional content they do, it is argued, from the fact that they are created and interpreted by other, intrinsically intentional entities (namely us).
…
An obvious question, then, is what sorts of things can have mental (intentional) states? And why those things and not others?

Some argue that intentionality is associated with the phenomenon of consciousness; i.e., that all mental/intentional acts are conscious. But this seems to fall short of the mark; it appears to be a psychological truth that we have unconscious desires, angers, and so on. So, as a fallback position, it has been suggested that all intentional acts and states are potentially conscious. … the idea that mental/intentional states are associated with minds has a persistent appeal.

Bill, in this post written a couple of weeks ago, gave an example of a hiker discovering rock piles left as trail markers. Bill’s argument was that the piles themselves had no intrinsic meaning, but that the fact that they were left by a previous hiker as trail markers, and subsequently read as trail markers by the later hiker, endows them with intentional content, derived from the minds of the two people involved. Now it happens that this sort of thing is done by much simpler organisms that human beings; in fact, even ants, having found food, will mark out a trail that other ants will in turn follow. I asked Bill about this in a comment on the linked post, and he agreed that this was indeed an example of intentional behavior.

So if we are sticking with the identity of the intentional with the mental, we are forced to ascribe mentality to ants. At the very least, if we define the intentional as that which is at least potentially conscious, then we must in turn ascribe consciousness to ants. Are we willing to go this far? It is perfectly reasonable to assume instead that ants might be little zombies, tiny machines that are simply wired up to follow pheromone trails to food. And if we are willing to ascribe intentionality, and therefore potential consciousness, to ants, what about even simpler creatures? Even bacteria have been shown to engage in trail-following behavior. Are we to imagine that they are conscious? Are we seriously willing to talk of a bacterium’s mental states? Even plants engage in complex, purposeful behaviors involving signalling, predator avoidance, etc. Where do we draw the line? Should we draw a line at all, or might it just be, as I have argued, that all living things are equally valid candidates for “intrinsic” intentionality, which does not necessarily have anything to do with mind or consciousness? What I am suggesting is that living things are intentional systems by virtue of their having been designed as such by evolution and natural selection, and that books and maps are intentional, in turn, in virtue of their having been designed by us. We might, on this view, leave the term “intrinsic” for those entities that were not designed by other intentional entities.

After a bit of further discussion, Malcolm then arrives at the following:

1”) Some mental states are intentional, and all intentional states are mental;
2”) All intentional and mental states are conscious, or at least potentially conscious;
3”) Even simple organisms such as ants and bacteria exhibit intentionality.
It seems, though, that any one of these forces us to conclude that:
4) Ants (and perhaps even bacteria and plants) are conscious, or at least potentially so.
I suggest that we may simply say instead:
5) All living things exhibit intentionality;
6) The intentionality of living things does not necessarily depend on mind or consciousness.

From my perspective there are a number of errors in this post, but almost all stem from the agreed position between Bill and Malcolm that ants exhibit intentional behavior when they mark a trail to food. To an outside observer with no knowledge of ant neuroanatomy and physiology, this might indeed be considered to be the result of conscious or purposeful behavior. [To properly discuss this topic we are going to have to delve into what is intentionality below.] However, an ant’s brain is little more than a collection of reflexes. It is much more accurate to consider the behavior as determined by the structure of the ant brain—find food, reverse path, start leaving a trail. Another example of what looks like intelligent behavior is described at the start of Daniel Dennett’s book, Elbow Room. The wasp sphex, stings another insect, paralyzing it, drags it to a location where it starts digging a hole. When the hole is dug, it then drags the prey into the hole, and lays its eggs in it. The prey then feeds the larvae when they hatch. This is quite complex behavior to observe, but if one moves the prey from where it was placed, sphex then simply cycles back and forth between the hole and where the prey was, revealing that the behavior is determined by the structure of the nervous system and not subject to spontaneous modification.

From the preceding paragraph, I would argue that 3” is incorrect. That a biological imperative is not the same as intentionality, when discussed in arguments about the mind. Without 3”, the remaining statements are no longer possible. When we look at where Malcolm wants to go with this argument, it is to consider things that were designed by evolution as being intentional systems, analogous to books and maps being intentional because they were designed by us. However, his final sentence, “We might, on this view, leave the term ‘intrinsic’ for those entities that were not designed by other intentional entities” leads to considerable difficulties. It is both ascribing intentionality to evolution, an ostensibly random process, and either makes all entities intentional, if evolution is intentional, or no entities intentional, since if evolution is not intentional, then nothing that evolved is intentional. [Of course, that assumes that everything evolved. It would not apply to anything created de novo from God.] The back door in this argument is to state that evolution is not an entity. But in so doing he is implying a non-entity can have intention.

Part of the problem here is that we are working with concepts that are very difficult to define. In the case of Malcolm’s argument, I think he is also confusing intentional with being part of a process that has evolved by chance, but is actually determined in its execution. In addition we are working with neural structures on the physical side, and we have no real clue how the physical structure of the brain of humans, or any vertebrate, creates what we see as emotions, intentionality, or consciousness. In discussing this problem several terms come up, mental states, conscious, intention, and—implied by intention—purpose. Malcolm equates intentionality to “aboutness” of mental acts. But in so doing I think he, in effect, introduces two other terms, perception and meaning. Perception can be used two ways, the reaction of nerves to a stimulus, or the interpretation of a stimulus by a conscious mind. The second is closely allied with meaning but is not necessarily identical to it. It would very easy to tie ourselves in knots or to end up in circular reasoning with this.

When talking about intentionality, do we mean something in the artificer that guides the creation of an object, or something that is part of an object. We certainly have little difficulty discussing intention in the sense of purpose, in behavior as action or behavior as creation of an object. That sense lies in the artificer. When we apply the term intention to the object it carries with it the implied, “who’s intent or for what purpose?” Inextricably tied to our use of the word intention is the idea of purpose or end. In the sense of there being an “end” to the pheromone trail, it is leading other ants back to the food source. But if it arose by chance, that some behaviors were more successful than other behaviors in survival of an ant colony, thus propagating them, can they be called purposeful? Especially in light of the changes in behavior being due to changes in the physical structure of the ant brain, not in some choice made by the ants.

Intentionality is a quality. Rather than “aboutness” it implies having a purpose—a use. The use can be to convey meaning or information, or it can be to act as a tool in the modification of other objects. Part of intentionality is its transitive character. It has no value of itself, but in its position of connection. [For the purposes of this discussion, I see no difference between intent and intention.] If we focus on the operational aspects, then the ant trail is intentional. But the difficulty there, is that, when intention is used, it describes conscious purpose not determined behavior, or, in other words, purpose by choice. The ant has no choice about leaving a pheromone trail. It cannot be forced to change its behavior. On the other hand, many animals, in particular vertebrates, can be forced to change behavior, or, more gently, trained.

If we are to decide what is intentional and what is not, one way to approach it is from what entities are capable of intention. Humans are the gold standard for intentionality, since it is from human behavior that the concept arose. But what are some of the qualities that can help determine other species that might exhibit intentions? Two aspects of intentionality are choice in the artificer and an end to be accomplished. Implied are also future-thinking and desire. There is one other implied and very critical aspect, critical to the point of being a defining criterion for intentionality—communication to another being. Operationally, the ant trail fulfills this last criterion, and is an excellent exemplar for it. However, the ant trail fails in a number of other criteria as we discussed above.

The goal now is to try to constrain the range of entities that can be said to exhibit intention in their behaviors. I am going to take a short-cut here and offer as demonstrated that most of the mammals can be said to exhibit intentional behavior. Even if we ascribe most of their behavior to innate neural structure, evidence can still be argued for forms of choice, desire, communication, etc. I would like to consider the white laboratory rat at this point. From what I know of its behavior as it relates to its brain structure, this creature may be on the line separating species capable of intentional behavior from the rest.

If a rat is trained to a high degree of repeatability to a maze, and then a portion of the cortex of its brain is removed surgically. When the rat recovers, its ability to negotiate the maze correctly is in proportion to the amount of brain tissue remaining. It makes no difference from where the brain tissue is removed; it is a function of how much is removed. It is as if the correct pattern of turns is distributed evenly across the rat’s brain cortex, and that the reliability comes from greater and greater numbers of neurons storing the correct information and being able to cause the correct turning. When these are diminished, the wrong turns become more frequent. In other words, the correct behavior, which appears as a choice to the observer, is actually the statistical summation of the neurons associated with the behavior. This is manifestly different from human behavior, where regardless of the number of successful negotiations through a situation, a single major failure can lead to choosing never to do it again.

Since a rat can be trained to change its behavior, and negotiate a maze, yet based on the preceding paragraph cannot be said to exhibit choice in the correct sense, trainability is exhibited by intentional creatures, but trainability does not guarantee intentional behavior or the capability for it. Another criteria above is communication to another entity. I immediately think of dogs and geese. Both species make loud noises when strange animals, including humans, are around. In the case of geese there is absolutely no selectivity. From the apparent result, a warning of potential danger, there is a communication to the other geese. But the lack of selectivity appears to put it in the category of ant trails—a biological imperative. However, dogs may bark at the first sound they hear or the first movement they see, but as soon as they realize it is someone or something that is not threatening, they quit. There is a refinement here. In some cases, they realize a warning is not necessary before even the first bark. Since dogs are trainable, and seem to express choice and communication, they are still in the running for having intention.

A more difficult pair of criteria are the future-thinking and planning. Intentionality always involves transits across time, whether quickly or long periods of time. Bill Vallicella’s trail markers could persist for many years or even centuries, and might be intended to do so. So how far in the future does an entity have to plan to be considered intentional. If we are talking on the order of a few seconds to a few minutes, my dogs could be said to exhibit intentional behavior, in the sense of creating a crude plan to accomplish a goal. My female Dalmatian has been known to act as if she needed to go out, just to get me to get up, so the boxer will get up, so she can have the place the boxer had. And, yes, that is a very subjective example. I would imagine farmers can find equivalent examples in either pigs or goats, both of which are the most intelligent of the common farm animals. I think the conclusion that I would draw is that somewhere around domestic animals, dogs, pigs, and goats, and above in apparent intelligence, we can expect some form of intentionality.

To ascribe intentionality and in turn consciousness to any lesser animal or to plants or bacteria, much less to the inanimate forces of nature, is to render the term meaningless.